[0:00:46]
linuxcrazy: Hello everyone. Welcome to a linuxcrazy podcast. This is podcast #18. It's an interview with Ron Bamford, Gentoo Foundation president. This is an updated interview with Roy, as the original recording -- the sound quality was pretty poor, and that one -- I called him with Asterisk on my IP phone, and I called his landline, and probably somewhere along the line the connection wasn't that good, so the sound quality wasn't that great, so anyway, we regrouped, and in this one, he called me with his soft phone. He uses the one with GNOME. I'm not sure if he uses GNOME as his window manager or not, but it's the soft phone. It used to be GNOMEETING or something, but right now it's called ekiga. I've used it before -- it's pretty good.

[0:01:54]
linuxcrazy: Anyhow, he called me with the soft phone through my SIP provider, direct, so evidently the route's a little bit better, and it doesn't have to go through any analog lines, and boy, the quality is much, much improved, so we're real excited about that. I'm in the process, also, of setting up an interview with the Gentoo developer -- his nickname is Vapier -- and he's also a member of the Gentoo council and a lead developer for the toolchain and embedded. As far as I know, probably a lot more, but with Gentoo and most distros, but especially with Gentoo, the toolchain is the bread and butter. I know right after I first install, after I do a stage3, first thing I do is rebuild the toolchain so it gives you a real good base for everything else that's coming along.

[0:02:52]
linuxcrazy: So anyhow, enjoy the podcast, and I'll talk to you all later. Bye.

D: Hello?

R: Good afternoon, Dave, how are you?

D: Oh, fine. Hi, Roy. Yeah, this sounds fantastic. This is going to be a lot better than our first take, I guess, from you calling. You're using a softphone, right?

R: That's right.

D: Yeah, so you calling directly to here with straight VOIP, it sounds a lot better.

R: Yeah, there's no analog transmission in the loop. It's all digits from my computer to your computer.

D: Wow, fantastic. This is going to be a lot better. Roy, how long have you been using Linux?

R: I started in 1999, so that's just over 8 years now.

D: And, how did you get started using Linux?

[0:04:00]
R: I was using Windows NT on my PC at home. I was looking for something that was more configurable, more up to date -- because I believe in 1999 NT was fairly old -- and I came across a magazine in one of our bookshops that had a DVD cover mate with Windows stuff on one side and Redhat 6.1 on the other, so I put together a dual boot system using Redhat 6.1.

[0:04:35]
D: Wow. When I first started, I started pretty much the same way. I think I started with Knoppix. I got a live CD one time. My handle is comprookie2000, so it was around that time when I first started using computers. It was around 2000. I'd never used computers before that. It was around 2001 I think I got set up with Windows. Anyway, it was around 2001 that I downloaded a Knoppix CD, and then I couldn't figure much out, but I enjoyed it. I think I got a magazine and it had Redhat 9 on it, and that was the first time I got started with Linux. How long have you been using Gentoo?

[0:05:32]
R: I started using Gentoo over the Christmas Holiday at the end of 2002, going into 2003, so that's just over 5 years now.

D: And why did you get started with Gentoo?

R: Oh, I've been through Redhat 6.1, 6.2, 7, 8... I just got bored and downloaded Redhat 9, but decided I was really fed up with RPM hell, trying to install things that weren't provided as part of a distro, and I wanted something that was easier to configure, because I didn't particularly like Redhat's graphical user interface tools for configuring things. So I started looking around. I was first looking at Linux from Scratch which looked good apart from the lack of a package manager, and found Gentoo instead, which is like Linux from Scratch only portage looks after all the packages for you, and from that time I've never looked back.

[0:06:48]
D: Yeah, my first install: I butchered it pretty bad because I didn't read the entire handbook. I kind of picked and choosed where I was going to install. I was going to save some time. But once I printed out the entire handbook and I did it step by step the way you're supposed to, it installed fine. And in fact, that original install I still have that here running. It's on a web server here at the house.

[0:07:21]
R: Yeah, I still use my original install too. I've made it across 3 sets of hard drives, 2 motherboards, but it's still a 32-bit x86 install, so it just boots.

D: Yup. Pretty neat. What is your home network like?

[0:07:46]
R: I've got a shorewall box guarding the front door. That's my firewall. Behind that on the DMZ I've got a Sun/Ultra-10 that I'm just using to play with, a very old K6-2 which I use as a web server and a shell server. It also runs my IRC logger, and a mailserver on a separate box. My main box in the house is an Athlon-XP 3200+ with 1G of RAM and 800G of disk space. And for going out and about, I've got a laptop and an IPaq. The IPaq runs Familiar which is another Linux distribution.

D: Uh huh.

R: I've not managed to get Gentoo on that yet.

D: Wow, that's pretty neat. What is the best thing about the Open Source community?

[0:08:57]
R: The community. Definitely. It's everybody working together, pulling together, to make everything better, something you don't find in the closed-source side of the software world.

D: Yeah, they talk about the community: it's basically everybody working together for a common goal, and it really is encouraging, almost, about humanity in general, that people can get together from all different parts of the world, and get together and put something together that is as cool as Linux is.

R: That's right.

D: And what is the most fun about being a moderator on the forums?

R: That's a strange way to ask about a position of responsibility and authority. It comes down to helping people. It's just another aspect of helping the community. My approach is to moderate things I come across in my normal forum usage. I don't go looking for things to moderate. People sometimes PM me or ping me on IRC to say, "do you think this post should be there?" Or, "can't you fix this, because it's spam." That's all part of the patch, but I don't go out of my way to find things to fix.

D: Right, right. Yeah I guess in your travels of helping other people, if you run across something that needs to be moderated, then you go ahead and do it.

R: That's right.

D: How much time do you volunteer for Gentoo?

R: Probably a couple of hours every night, and a large chunk of my free time at week ends.

D: Yup.

R: As far as to come up with a number, in hours, let's say 10 hours at week ends and 2 hours through the week -- that'd be about 20 hours a week.

D: Yup. Sometimes you don't realize how much time and effort it puts in for all those devels and forum moderators and developers like yourself to keep a distribution moving forward.

R: Quite honestly, it wasn't until you asked the question just now that I actually thought about it.

[0:11:48]
D: Well that's a good thing, because having fun is what it's all about, so I guess if you started thinking about, gosh, I'm putting in too much time, then maybe it's time to do something else.

R: That's right.

splitting the post so it doesn't get too large for a single forum post.added edits suggested by comprookie2000

Last edited by dch24 on Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:23 am; edited 1 time in total

[0:12:07]
D: What needs to be done to improve the communication with the foundation members, the developers, and the users?

R: I think the way you've asked the question is illustrating a part of the problem. You've highlighted divisions within Gentoo. These divisions need to be blurred, or even erased, some of them. Communications needs to be more transparent. The new trustees have decided that everything they will do will be in public, so it will be a matter of record. We did an experiment a year or so ago with Gentoo user reps, which didn't seem to produce a lot, possibly due for lack of clear goals. That sort of thing could be reexamined to see how it could be made more successful. Anything that brings users, brings the various groups together and blurs the edges between them has got to be good.

D: Yeah, sure is. I guess anything that can eliminate the feeling that it's "us against them" and everybody's working together for a common goal, is how everybody should feel.

R: That's right.

[0:13:38]
D: I would like to see forum members like myself, for an annual donation, become contributing members, with some kind of a -- it doesn't really matter or have to be something really special -- but by their user name. But what do you think about an idea like that?

R: I'm reluctant to go down the path of collecting money and advertising that people have donated to Gentoo until the foundation's back on its feet and it has a proper budget so that we know where the money will go. I think it's a longer-term aim that we can do that sort of thing. But everybody's contribution is valuable and there is a danger that you'll create two classes of Gentoo community members, because there will be those that have contributed the most.

D: How could users become more involved to help take the load off the developers?

R: There's lots of ways. Starting with the very minimal involvement:

Any user can post bug reports into Gentoo's bugzilla. It only takes a few minutes to open an account and make your first post saying you've done something (whatever) and it didn't turn out quite the way you expected. The bug form helps you fill it in: it asks you for your emerge --info so a developer can see how your system's put together, and a few other details. You even get emails from bugzilla as the developers work your bug.

More skilled users can attach patches to their bug reports, so the developer can look over the proposed changes, maybe add some polish, and then incorporate it, and save developer time.

Users with more time and perhaps a higher skill level can become arch testers. It's the arch testers in Gentoo that test testing packages on a stable system and determine if they should become stable or not. So more arch testers equals a higher quality tree for everybody.

Last but not least, you can become a developer. It's not as hard as it's perceived, because users who want to take part in Gentoo can convince a team that they want to become a part of that they're serious about spending some of their time. It's a two-way process of developer recruitment because the team has to spend some time with the new recruit to get them on board, get them up to speed. After you've been contributing patches and things in bugzilla for a wee while, then you'll probably become invited to become a developer so that you can make your own commits.

Users who want to tip a toe in the water can come to bug day on IRC chat. It's the first Saturday in every month. This month it will be on April 5. The notice for it has just been posted to the forums and to gentoo-dev-announce, so there's a few links there you can follow up.

[0:17:25]
R: In the wider sense, developers need not be interested in code. There's scope for documentation developers. The foundation has a place for administration skills, although the foundation cannot recruit for that at the moment because foundation members need to be gentoo developers for a whole year before they can become members of the foundation. That's something that I would like to change. But it's not going to happen very quickly.

D: Yeah, bug day, once every month: I'm going to kind of make a commitment to myself to try to check that out, this month. I didn't really take too much interest in it: I've been to bugzilla a few times, but mainly I was being selfish -- I was just trying to see how to fix something instead of seeing if there was anything I could do to give back. So that's one thing, as a user, that I could try to get involved in. I think a lot of times, users -- we act like we want to help but we don't really do the footwork, you know? You can talk about helping but actually doing it is the actual meat into it, so for me I'm going to make a commitment to myself to become more involved, just to go to bug day each time and see if there's anything I can do to help out. So, that's something I'm going to try to do. I have found the developers and forum moderators very helpful. They've always been great to me, and very helpful to the users. What can the users do to help the developers, and build a stronger partnership? I know we just kind of talked about that a little bit -- about bugzilla and all that. But is there something that the users could do to maybe make it feel like it's not "us against them," or should we just stop feeling like that, and be done with it?

[0:19:30]
R: That's the first thing, isn't it? To stop talking like that and feeling like that. Though I think it emerged naturally as a result of breaking down the barriers caused by identifying the different groups within the Gentoo community, because it is all a single community.

D: Is there an update to the legal status of the Gentoo foundation?

R: Yes, there is. We found all the paperwork we needed to find, now, to be able to incorporate. We've spoken with Daniel Robbins, who is the Gentoo founder, about who we should use in New Mexico for an agent. We've spoken with the agent and we're in the process of passing across all the information to the agent that we need to re-incorporate. Once he has that information, he will submit it to the New Mexico state authorities within a day or two. Then it's a case of waiting for New Mexico to check it out and issue our certificate of incorporation. Hopefully he'll have all the information he needs early next week, and we'll have submitted the information by the end of the week.

D: Oh, fantanstic. Is it a big process? Or is it, once everything gets rolling, it should be pretty simple?

R: It's not so much a big process -- it's a case of making sure we dot all the I's and cross all the T's. Because we have been incorporated in New Mexico previously, it's not like we're creating a new legal entity. We have to restore ourselves to good legal standing, which is a case of filing all the reports we were supposed to file and didn't, and dotting some I's and crossing some T's which were missed with the last filing. You may remember, in January, discussions on the mailing list about a filing that went astray.

[0:21:53]
D: Right.

R: So we're finishing off that filing.

D: Well, people like you've gotten involved, so there's a little more structure to it so that things can get accomplished as far as all the administration stuff that needs to be done. I know -- it's fantastic that there are people that have kind of taken the reins and to give the guys that do all the coding and everything -- so they can just pretty much concentrate on the coding which they enjoy, and people that are more qualified in doing the administration type stuff can do the administration type stuff.

R: Yeah.

D: What is the SFC, and how can it help Gentoo?

R: The SFC is an umbrella organization for not-for-profits like Gentoo. It runs a single not-for-profit, which organizations like Gentoo which qualify for not-for-profit status can join. The SFC then looks after all the paperwork side, the legal side of the not-for-profit, and allows the Gentoo foundation trustees to concentrate on the things they do best, the fun side if you like. Going forward, there's several options for the long-term stability of the Gentoo foundation. We have to comply with the legal aspects of the IRS and the state of New Mexico, we have to meet some accountancy standards, and Gentoo developers in general don't have the necessary legal and accountancy experience, or skills, or information even to want to carry that off themselves. So while short term, reincorporating as the Gentoo foundation, a completely independent legal entity in New Mexico fixes the immediate problem, longer term -- if we want to run it for ourselves -- we would need to employ professionals to do the things we can't do for ourselves, or we join an umbrella organization like the SFC, so that they look after the legal and accountancy things for us.

[0:24:41]
D: Yeah, it sounds like you've got a plan, so that's a step in the right direction.

R: Yeah. Well, roughly summed up, it's: restore our good standing, and then think about the long term.

D: I see. Hey, how did you come up with the handle, NeddySeagoon?

R: When I joined the Gentoo forums, I was looking for a handle fairly quickly. At the time, I was naming all my systems after characters in the 1950's radio show called, "The Goon Show." Neddie Seagoon is the central character in all these shows. People that are still interested to hear the show, it's still being repeated on BBC Radio 7 on the internet.

[0:25:57]
D: OK, Roy, I want to thank you very much for the interview and also I want to thank you very much for all the hard work and time and effort you put into Gentoo for everyone. So, thank you, Roy.

R: I enjoy doing Gentoo, which is why I do it. I've enjoyed doing your interview. I'd like to say that this is an excellent way of bridging the gap between the various parts of the community, because it makes the rest of us realize there is real people on the end of the nicks they see on IRC and on the forums, just by hearing our voices.

D: Yeah, I talked to Vapier there. He's a developer. He's on the council. He's one of the ones that maintains our toolchain, which is pretty much a backbone for, I guess, all distribution, but for sure for Gentoo. Anyhow, he was nice enough, he's agreed to do an interview. So I'll put together a list of questions and hopefully next week or the week after we'll get together, but again thank you very much, Roy.

R: Thanks very much Dave

D: Ok, Bye.

[0:27:25 music]
[0:28:05 end]

Last edited by dch24 on Thu Apr 03, 2008 6:26 am; edited 1 time in total

D: Oh, fine. Hi, Roy. Yeah, this sounds fantastic. This is going to be a lot better than our first take, I guess, from you calling. You're using a cellphone, right?
[edit]
D: Oh, fine. Hi, Roy. Yeah, this sounds fantastic. This is going to be a lot better than our first take, I guess, from you calling. You're using a (softphone), right?

D: Yeah, so you calling directly to here with straight voice, it sounds a lot better.
[edit]
D: Yeah, so you calling directly to here with straight (VoIP), it sounds a lot better.

(shorewall?)That is right, it is a firewall distro.
(Familiar?) That is right too, a Linux distro for Ipaq

D: Yeah, they (comment?) about the community: it's basically everybody working together for a common goal, and it really is encouraging, almost, about humanity in general, that people can get together from all different parts of the world, and get together and put something together that is as cool as Linux is.
[edit]
D: Yeah, they (a -- talk) about the community: it's basically everybody working together for a common goal, and it really is encouraging, almost, about humanity in general, that people can get together from all different parts of the world, and get together and put something together that is as cool as Linux is.

This one not sure;
R: Oh, I've been through Redhat 6.1, 6.2, 7, 8... I just (got all that?) and downloaded Redhat 9, but decided I was really fed up with RPM hell, trying to install things that weren't provided as part of a distro, and I wanted something that was easier to configure, because I didn't particularly like Redhat's graphical user interface tools for configuring things. So I started looking around. I was first looking at Linux from Scratch which looked good apart from the lack of a package manager, and found Gentoo instead, which is like Linux from Scratch only portage looks after all the packages for you, and from that time I've never looked back.

One more edit;
D: Yeah, I talked to (Dave here.) He's a developer. He's on the council. He's one of the ones that maintains our toolchain, which is pretty much a backbone for, I guess, all distribution, but for sure for Gentoo. Anyhow, he was nice enough, he's agreed to do an interview. So I'll put together a list of questions and hopefully next week or the week after we'll get together, but again thank you very much, Roy.
[edit]
D: Yeah, I talked to (Vapier there.) He's a developer. He's on the council. He's one of the ones that maintains our toolchain, which is pretty much a backbone for, I guess, all distribution, but for sure for Gentoo. Anyhow, he was nice enough, he's agreed to do an interview. So I'll put together a list of questions and hopefully next week or the week after we'll get together, but again thank you very much, Roy._________________http://dev.gentoo.org/~dabbott/

Roy Bamford, the newly elected President of the Gentoo Foundation's trustees, spoke with David Abbott from LinuxCrazy. You can download the podcast.

He talked about recent challenges the Gentoo Foundation faces, among other topics. You can learn about the reinstatement of the foundation, short- and long-term plans, a possible move to the Software Freedom Conservancy and answers to some common questions, like how you can contribute to Gentoo. On a more personal note, you can hear about Roy's long Linux and Gentoo experience, his hardware and the origin of his nickname, NeddySeagoon.

David Abbott plans to interview more well-known Gentoo developers. Next on the list is Mike Frysinger, a member of the Gentoo Council and many Gentoo core projects like the base system and the toolchain. We'll keep you posted.

I really wouldn't suggest that those interviews should be directed, but everyone (incl. most IT companies) does it, so it may be easily cited on sites like eWeek.com, osnews, distrowatch. And millions of other sites just do translate messages found on big sites so information forks immediately.

Wow! Great. Should post the interviews via audio more often. Easier then reading the stuff online and I can do something else around the house while I'm listening. (... such as eating or ripping out a wall.)